


Shaped by My Storming

by artemid



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: An Appropriate Amount of Angst, Backstory, Bullying, Childhood Friends, Discrimination, Some hurt/comfort, Violence appropriate of the movie, When Baze left Chirrut, When Baze left Jedha, i started this before the book came out lmao, little bit of meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:01:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24091795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemid/pseuds/artemid
Summary: Baze and Chirrut struggle against the Imperial presence on Jedha. Meanwhile, memories of their past dog Chirrut.
Relationships: Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	Shaped by My Storming

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: one instance of discrimination against Chirrut via childhood bullying that picks on his blindness. Nothing very nasty because I do not want to write that and neither do I want to use that for dramatic affect.

The boy in front catches him staring. Casually Chirrut averts his gaze. Of course, the problem is that it’s not the first time he’s been seen. The boy’s voice rings out stronger than most, draws Chirrut’s eyes to him amidst the morning prayers. And admittedly the evening prayers as well.

The boy always sits in the same spot, near the shade of a stone pillar strung with holy flowers, which inevitably places him in Chirrut’s field of vision because Chirrut is frequently all but late and sits near the door. If they were any farther apart, Chirrut would never have seen him; his sight darkens some feet beyond, just past the short steps that lead to the candlelit shrine. He still forgets to wear his glasses, but they’re no good here anyways. It’s so dim and Chirrut can’t remember a time he could see easily in the dark. One day he will not be able to distinguish the stone pillar the boy kneels beneath from the dim forms around it. The boy is not much older than Chirrut, but his voice sits very low, never strays closer than a few paces to the tickling crack that Chirrut and some of his peers face. This seems very mature to Chirrut, as if he’s already adapted to the annoying change. 

He doesn’t mean to stare, though after awhile that becomes null because he still does it, finds that he automatically focusses with unthinking eyes, over bowed and shorn heads, on the boy with the ears as the room chants together. It takes his eyes meeting Chirrut’s a few times before Chirrut thinks it might be annoying to him. It’s difficult to stop though. They’re only halfway through morning prayers when he glances back at Chirrut a second time today. Chirrut firmly closes his eyes in response which allows the voices around him closer. The thick, sweet smelling smoke about the room falls in around him. He gives his ears over to the enclosure, the creaks of wood and stone. Breaths in darkness. And easily comes back to the low tone of the boy. His voice ebbs in and out. Steady. By the time prayers have ended and Chirrut opens his eyes, most of the smoke has risen to the high rafters.

It’s the ghost of this that strikes him, here, passes over and through him, for some reason of the Force years and years after faithfully cementing those adored moments in memory, as Chirrut leans back against a stone doorway laid deep into a wall. There’s just the sound of his heavy breathing to keep him company. Running feet and shouts pass just beyond the entrance to the alley. He lets them be.

He’d been in the middle of it when he’d realized his echo-box had stopped working properly. It hardly mattered normally, but with so many opponents it was more challenging. He’d driven a few more heavy blows between hard armor into soft, exposed flesh before a shout struck him like a hand about the cuff of his neck and compelled him down into a crouch, staff held out like a particularly lethal branch. Passing blaster fire warmed his skin and shot down four of his opponents. Then, a familiar curse.

“What’s wrong?” Baze shouted to him in South Jedhan, words edged worriedly. Chances were only Chirrut understood; these troopers only seem to care for Basic and after that only Standard Jedhan as they call it. Chirrut taught Baze, a long time ago.

Sweeping the feet out from a Stormtrooper approaching from behind, who perhaps shouldn’t have bothered with a blaster if he didn’t know how to use it, Chirrut spun his staff in a flapping swirl of fabric, and brought it down over another’s head with a satisfying thwack. The two fell to the ground with heavy thuds and Chirrut went low again. 

He called back to Baze in the same. “You were being too generous with your portion. I thought I should give you more to chew on.” 

A blaster shot flew past and fell the first trooper Chirrut had knocked over as they were getting to their feet.

“There’s plenty,” Baze shouted. 

There was the thunk of metal hitting armor as Baze struck someone with his heavy gun. He closed the distance between them. 

“Here.” A familiar, firm grip on his shoulder and then Baze’s tense tone, rough from fighting. "Okay? It’s that damn transmitter again, isn’t it? _Piece_ of–”

“Yes,” Chirrut said. A gun charged. Chirrut braced himself on his staff, turned on the ball of his foot, and kicked, knocking the blaster aside. This allowed Baze’s cannon to fire off a clean shot. The trooper went down. “I wouldn’t be more serious if I were hurt?”

The sound of Baze’s gun lowering and suddenly it was quieter, though they'd both known more troopers were on their way. Far, far away, beyond the walls, more shouts and gunfire echoed to them down the old stone.

“You don’t get more serious,” Baze muttered, his worry evaporated into exasperation. “Let’s move.” He pressed Chirrut’s arm briefly.

“All of Gerrera’s soldiers got out?”

“They’re gone.” Waves rolled from Baze’s tone. “As we need to be.” 

Chirrut felt it, too, as they ran, knew the growing wind inside him was sure to sweep into the streets as well. The outcome of this brief, violent skirmish will spread like flame to a dry bush. Saw Gerrera and all his force had been wrestled from his partisan base inside city walls and, outgunned, they were repelled out and further out into the windblown desert. The assault was savage. Neither side spared much care for the homes they tore apart. 

It’s hard to know the size of the ripples this will cause. The Empire is more brutal in its tactics, escalated after Gerrera’s nagging presence grew persistent. Between the two, NiJedha is losing the meat of its bones. Now the man is out from underfoot, which will only mean more Imperial pressure, more troopers in the streets. Jedha has someone’s attention now.

This current ferocious era of NiJedha that Saw Gerrera broke into with all his guns and war knowledge is hardly over, though. There will be insurgents left inside the city and Gerrera, like a dog with a bloody bone, is likely already digging somewhere. The man will never give up the fight. Chirrut can understand that. 

It felt good to run, lest the fear swell and choke him.

Now, here in the alley, alone, Chirrut gets his breath under control. He hears it echo back to him off the rough stone shielding him from the street. He listens fiercely to the sound of feet running toward his location.

“ _Chirrut_.”

Turning, Chirrut steps quickly out of his hiding place.

“It’s clear,” Baze says, hushed and waiting for him, before they’re sprinting again.

They take a circuitous way, sticking to quiet places and hidden alleys. They do not head to the Temple, though that they both feel it press against them, offering something lost, pulsing, is implicit in every turned corner that pulls them farther from the long shadow. The masters that remain within its stones are either too old to fight, better at secrecy than he or Baze, or living on in the words of acolytes solely. Most Guardians and Disciples have fled into the city, the desert, and farther still. Some were exiled when the Empire was more interested in being political. Some went to find support beyond Jedha’s atmosphere. Which Gerrera answered. Others vanished. Few remain within to keep Imperial stewards and gun-wielding enforcers from getting to all but the deepest of Jedha’s kyber mines. 

A long time has passed since Jedi used Jedhan kyber; if any record of those times were kept, they are long worn away, either by the decades, or by the bloodstain of this more recent, unsparing purge of the Jedi Order and traditions. This must be true otherwise the Empire would have already begun to pillage one distinct cavern. It hides behind smaller branches that tangle and weave and confuse any map Imperial instruments might make for Imperial eyes. There, below the Temple, lies the deepest ancient vein of kyber in NiJedha, once used by the brightest stars of the Jedi. It would take a decade and more to fully mine at the speed they dig now. 

Imperial touch hovers. They know what lies in forgotten history. But they cannot take what cannot be found. It’s a powerful greed that brought them to Jedha, to her holy caves and bygone city. _For what profit_ , is the question that echoes in their wake. Only a hand that did not want to be seen would come to Jedha for kyber. Something, Chirrut thinks, as he thinks every day, may soon break NiJedha open.

He and Baze head to a small parts shop. The owner’s daughter quickly lets them in the back door with the silence of surprise. Further into the shop where shelves and shelves of paraphernalia are stacked, useful and inscrutable metal contraptions crammed into a small space, voices can be heard. She takes them up steep, hidden steps behind a set of sturdy shelves which swing open on oiled hinges. 

Once inside the silent, small room at the top, she lingers, nervously.

“Thank the Force you opened the door. Baze really had to use the refresher.” Chirrut smiles to break the tension, to reassure her through Baze’s silent disregard of his joke. “We’re very grateful to you and your mother, Pleness,” Chirrut says, listening to the way his voice shapes the room. “We ask only for a couple nights. Once things are calm again. They know our faces, though we’re not so important to them, I think, that we would want to be here for long.”

“Bhante,” she calls him, soft, natural as any native of Jedha, “what happened?”

Chirrut turns toward her. Though her cold-blooded constitution leaves her somewhat lost to him in the unheated air, he senses her otherwise. “Saw Gerrera has been driven from the city,” he says. 

She takes this quietly. There’s the sound of Baze removing his power cell. 

“Things are going to change,” she says. Baze’s movements slow for a moment.

Chirrut reaches out and her long Durian fingers squeeze his thinner ones. He cups her hand between his, shakes them softly. “They will. But we have the Force. Many lived today to fight another. As long as someone stands in action, there will always be hope. On hope you build the rest.”

Behind him Baze sits heavily on the old cot.

“I’ll bring you dinner in an hour,” she says. “Stay quiet.”

“That will not be a problem,” Chirrut says, prompting a scoff from Baze. “The Force of others be with you.”

“Let it be with us all.” 

The door shuts behind her and Chirrut locks it. 

There’s a jarring, swelling quiet as Chirrut gently sweeps his staff out, searching for the table he can’t quite hit the placement of. New places offer new challenges. The thing is a dead space and makes no sound of its own. Though he’s sure it’s there.

“Left,” Baze offers and lays down.

“Did you take your shoes off? I don’t want to walk on grit.”

Baze grunts mildly and Chirrut tuts.

His staff knocks against some sort of dull, synthetic material. Chirrut sits at the table with a sigh, unlatches the echo-box from its strap, and slides his multitool from its pocket. Last time it was only a wiring issue. He’d been in a hurry, perhaps failed to tighten something. 

On the cot, Baze keeps still like something that doesn’t want to be noticed. Yet it would be incredibly difficult to find a more distracting thing on Jedha.

“Think louder, I might actually hear you,” Chirrut says, not content with humoring him if this is one of Baze’s more selfless silences, made for him to curl around his mind’s sharp blades. He keeps himself turned toward his task, but when Baze hums in reply, Chirrut spends a moment inwardly declaiming a particular kind of intentional stupidity. Baze’s black mood soaks the corner of the room, unfurls like an ink spill on cloth. Chirrut traces the edge of the large hinge of the echo-box, then the first small screw.

“You’re reluctant to say,” Chirrut says. Baze exhales, looking for peace and Chirrut pauses. “There’s no one to make you,” he mutters, though unhappily.

No reply. Chirrut continues unscrewing each small bolt in turn. 

They're both raw. They are chaffed from constant wind and scoured from sand. Baze flies away from Chirrut sometimes; mind and heart, he goes someplace that Chirrut can barely reach him. He does not want to burden. Chirrut is effectively caught between respect for his privacy, which Baze holds highly, and a need to confront the fractures he feels, broken open just beneath his skin. 

But Baze won’t speak. Chirrut only guesses at the tumult. Though educated guesses. Recently, they fight more, fights of people that have only each other to trust and argue with. Things are more intimate than ever, but conversely, at times, Baze has never felt more distant, so removed from Chirrut. He never hated anything as much as he does this remoteness between them. Baze will think himself into holes and up lonely precipices with the best. And Chirrut struggles with fear from this.

Though his hands are steady, a small lapse in Chirrut’s concentration makes him fumble the last screw and it slips, bounces from his grasp, toward the table edge until he snatches it up. He sighs with a tired mutter, the cool metal dense in his fist.

“Keep those feelers to yourself,” Baze murmurs from where he lays and he is a little less withdrawn, pulled by Chirrut’s obviousness.

Chirrut huffs. He leans back in his chair, dropping the last screw into his chest pocket with the rest. He relaxes the tension coiled in his gut in easing segments. After they speak with Lona he will meditate, but until then this complete removal from the recently shook streets tugs at something restless within Chirrut. His skin prickles. There are no windows from which he can hear beyond the walls. 

“That has always proved difficult to put into practice when it comes to Baze Malbus,” Chirrut tells him.

“Is he so interesting?” Baze mutters.

“Yes,” Chirrut replies simply, because he should know.

Chirrut pushes away from the table, moves to the cot until his knees knock against Baze’s where they sit over the edge. He waits there, leans, listening as Baze breathes deeply. 

Without making him wait too long a hand takes Chirrut’s, clasping fingers gently, and Chirrut easily allows himself to be pulled forward. Baze sits up, wraps his arms around Chirrut’s middle, presses his face into Chirrut’s stomach, close enough to feel the shape of his nose and brow through the layers of cloth and to feel the warmth of his hold. Chirrut’s fingers curl into the long hair at the nape of Baze’s neck which is damp with sweat from running and fighting. He strokes the soft skin there.

Long hair allowed to grow out in the style of his family’s clan again, now after nearly three years of Imperial occupation. What does the Force care for hair, but Baze’s faith once gleamed like a shaft of light and Chirrut has born witness as each stone has fallen to obstruct it more over time. It still fights, but less reaches the ground. The shorn head was always an honor to Baze. Perhaps if he were any other sort of Guardian, it wouldn’t feel so significant. 

He trusts that the Force has a way for Baze. They are naturally tied. They will endure any loss or reach, the Force carrying Baze as he once carried the Force until the day he comes back to it. However far he walks from it. This has been added to Chirrut’s faith.

But none of this– _none_ – makes it easier to swallow the aching burn that threatens more and more. This takes Chirrut to blistering altercations with Imperial stormtrooper and partisan alike and around corners Baze would rather he didn’t turn. He burns for Baze’s hard hunch against the wind, burns for the Temple, the biting hole tearing, yawning wider, burns for himself, for Chirrut and for what they’ve taken from him and for the scalding fear they’ve given in exchange. 

What is worst is finding no opponent to focus on. Are days waiting, watching, for a time to step into movement. These days grow, like cracked, dry earth. But no other bearing would yield relief. The Force willed some to leave. Others have laid down their arms. Others their lives. Chirrut follows the only path he trusts. Follows hope. To do anything less, to stand still against the wind, would be sure to rip something more from him. 

He winds tighter into the soft waves as Baze sighs without relief. His arms cradle Chirrut, one rising up his back protectively. Chirrut strokes through Baze’s hair, until he feels some tension drain. Then does it some more. Baze breathes into his stomach, searching for a steady rhythm.

“…You place so much faith in Saw Gerrera’s presence here?” Chirrut asks after awhile.

“No,” Baze says, softly. He presses close, as if kissing Chirrut’s stomach, then lifts away. He rests his chin on Chirrut to look up at him. Chirrut tries to smooth the frown from his own expression, but he’s unsure how successful this is. 

They’ve spoken of Gerrera’s influence many times before. Baze thinks aloud now, laying the words down while his mind stretches further ahead. “He has no use for holy cities. Only cares for killing the Empire. As if nothing else reaches him. So who can say what he will fail to protect in the process?”

Chirrut slides a finger down his nose. “There are those to guard the rest.” 

Baze hums. A large, warm hand strokes Chirrut’s jaw. “Do you want help with your transmitter?”

Baze could use the distraction for a little while. Chirrut pats his cheek. 

“Okay,” he replies and turns away to fetch it, only to be halted, gently pulled back against Baze’s solid chest again. He’s released within a moment. Chirrut’s hands linger where they’d grasped Baze’s forearms. 

“Stay or go? Either would suit,” he teases lightly, despite the mood.

Hands swing in his. “Both.” A squeeze and he’s let loose.

Chirrut banishes the large wave that surges his tired nerves to somewhere more distant and easier to grasp. Somewhere he can protect Baze from while he is so torn and raw.

Chirrut sits close to Baze on the bed as he works on the box with soft sounds of metal. It’s not long before Chirrut leans over to rest against him and Baze shifts closer, allowing Chirrut his arm. They talk softly of things. Outside the stone walls of the room, NiJedha walks on to night. 

It’s Lona and not Pleness that brings them dinner, longer than an hour later. Lona that tries to refuse the little money they press on her. She sits with them and talks until her daughter emerges in the doorway, and then still some more. Lona got Baze nearly all the parts for his cannon, some four years ago when he decided a lightbow would not do against some things. They’ve known her since, witnessed Pleness grow into adulthood in her mother’s shop.

They explain the skirmish, how they’d tried to keep some troopers occupied long enough. Lona tells them that until further notice, a new curfew is in place by Imperial mandate. Once Pleness comes to sit by her mother the talk meanders on to other issues.

“Yes, but that’s how it’s been in occupation,” Lona says, hands restless on the table. “So lately it’s been harder to find items– it’ll come around again when their attention wanes and moves on to bigger problems. I keep most things like that backdoor, anyways. But it’s a different market. Always hard to find what you need through informal opportunities. Hasn’t changed much now that there’s someone to really look out for.”

“You let us know right away if they start to give you trouble,” Baze says. “It’ll get worse now.”

“It might,” she agrees. A pause takes the discussion. “Pleness brought you water to clean up. We should let you sleep. About the money–”

“What are you arguing for?” Baze asks, tired but gentle enough. What they have to give her are barely sufficient funds to cover the cost of feeding two more, not to mention the fact that she’s concealing vigilantes.

“It’s impolite to refuse,” Chirrut adds in a tone that’s dissuaded many a young acolyte. “Accept our thanks.”

“Taking money from Guardians feels like a sin,” Lona tells them as she ushers Pleness, who is likely half-asleep, to the door. “Fine. Alright. We’ll bring you some breakfast and more news tomorrow. Sleep well, Guardians.”

But when sleep comes, it does not come peacefully. 

Chirrut is unable to find complete quietness in meditation and when he takes to the bed, he’s shrouded with a close fog that tinges everything, mutes and distracts. It’s a sign of a half-done meditation. As if he’s held back by something. An unsettling phrase manages to pin itself to the tailspin of Chirrut’s exhausted thoughts, circling like a bird overhead, chasing his attention: _stay or go_?

Finally Chirrut feels Baze’s breath even out and focusses on matching his pace. Then it hits him and pulls him deep.

––––

It’s the way the candles made blurred halos in rows behind him, the boy with the ears, that sticks with Chirrut later. He finds when mentally cataloging the large, hazily lit prayer room that he starts here first, with the thought of a silhouette against light, before going onto the rest, to red-strung pillars and meandering aisles between firm cushions. He lost clear vision in this room very quickly after the fog began because of the shadowy light, but he’s known the place since he was small, can almost feel where the smoke pushes out and meets familiar walls. It still makes good practice to recreate it in his mind. Even better to begin with something he likes.

The bright hall outside the doors is almost painful in contrast, so he keeps his eyes shut when he exits. There are a pair of amber-tinted glasses that Master Ji's given to him, but Chirrut forgets glasses like he forgets he breathes air. It’s not until the middle of a stance, with harsh breath, that he remembers intake and exhalation are actions he does each second. The sunglasses are a hassle though, always taking them off and putting them on again. Mostly he uses them for outdoors events, but beyond those they sit in their case. 

The reactions to the glasses and his eyes vary enough that it’s noticeable. Their increasingly misty appearance lends them a striking quality, he's aware. At times he's caught, too, staring into the mirror as if convening with the Force itself. Testing and seeing where the pale fog begins and where the encroaching blankness in his vision has paused. Like poking gums around a missing tooth, or running a hand through shorn hair, it’s as if by seeing the physical edge of the blindness, it will be easier to grasp and accept. Perhaps he feels as if he’s keeping track this way, too. That there’s less chance of being taken by surprise.

One day, Chirrut is sitting in Master Ji's workspace at her low table, a sensation not completely unfamiliar creeping up the back of his neck. He’s sweaty and chilled in the cool room, something nearly as cold sticking in his stomach. The snapped frame of his eyeglasses digs into his palm. He doesn’t have another pair; this will be the second time he’s needed a replacement. The other boy has already been released, but Ji has asked to speak to Chirrut alone. Chirrut wonders if it’s because he threw the first fist.

“Do you feel better?” Ji asks.

Chirrut touches the bruise forming on his cheek.

“I mean, now that you’ve fought him. Feel better?” she asks.

Chirrut glances at her while Ji waits. It’s questions like this one that make her one of Chirrut’s favorites, but also a terrible gauge for how deep in bantha shit he is. Rint has been dogging him for months, always there when Chirrut is at his lowest with petty or aggressive words. This time Chirrut swung before he could finish. Which was very satisfying. 

In the end, Chirrut can only offer his teacher a grin that’s not really quite rueful enough. But Master Ji chuckles. At this moment, the door opens, revealing Master Keal, who Chirrut, admittedly, is not as fond of.

“Not quite what I expected to see,” Keal says, inclining his head as Chirrut tucks his smile away. 

“Oh no, Master?“ Ji asks. She turns away from him and then says only to Chirrut, or so it seems to him, “admittedly, I’m inclined to give some leniency this time. It isn't a bad thing to stand up for yourself.” The master shares another small smile with him. 

“I understand Rint said things,” Ji continues, words close in the small room, so she speaks softly. She pauses as if to see if Chirrut will repeat the things that Rint said, but continues easily. “I want you to know that he must overcome these thoughts if he wishes to proceed further in this Temple. Every action has consequences that we must confront. Disrespect is not tolerated.”

Keal taps the floor, the pads of his fingers light, but firm. Sitting just outside of the doorway, he looks between the two of them. “However, Chirrut,” he says, “we must always consider our own actions. You may not have started the argument, but your response left much to be desired.”

“Master–“

“It takes two, Master Ji.”

“You’ve spoken to Rint first,” Ji prompts. Master Keal hums in a neutral sort of way that expects no further questioning. Ji catches Chirrut’s eye.

“Rint will also be scrubbing toilets for a few days,” she tells him. She watches Chirrut’s face.

“When someone injures you here,” Ji quietly presses two fingers to her own chest and then pauses, “it’s difficult.”

Chirrut understands that Ji wouldn’t like to insult him which is why she considers her words so carefully.

“I’ve never been very good at handling insults,” Ji says. “I don’t like being angry. My own instinct is to hide from it. Anger feels like something to be ashamed of sometimes. Like they’ve won.”

Chirrut ducks his chin slightly.

“But I know that’s not true,” Ji says. “At times being angry is your inner self trying to tell you that there’s something wrong. You don’t have to talk about it with me, Chirrut, but I think you should find someone with whom you can. Okay?”

He nods his head. 

“And if this happens again, please come to me. I don’t really enjoy counting new bruises on young acolytes.”

“Yes, master.”

“Okay,” she says. She waits, then continues when Keal fails to add anything. “Thank you, Chirrut. Extra duties in the gardens isn’t so bad, hm?”

“No, master.”

“Mhm. Okay. We can talk more later.” She dismisses Chirrut with a smile. “Think on what I’ve said, though. There are different kinds of bruises. Understand?”

“Yes, master.”

“Good.”

Chirrut picks up his staff, hides his eyeglasses in the other hand.

Unavoidably, Rint is waiting for Chirrut at the shining greenhouses the next day. The high sun glares off the glass dome, searing white into his eyes. It seems they both have the same empty hour in their duties to fill with their punishment. Or perhaps he’s just come for Chirrut. He blocks the entrance, casually leaning against a large stone.

Behind him, the gardens spread beyond the glass. Bright desert wildflowers, their colors washed in Chirrut’s vision, abandoned of reds like a hazy, grey river streaked with blue, are kept at one end, sweeping down the side of the glasshouse in an organic curve, broken with fruit trees and sturdy trellises draped with leafy green, while herbs and edibles are at the front in their own carefully tended, raised beds. He thinks there are a few acolytes of the Temple and volunteers working their hands in the dirt, engrossed, but it’s hard to tell, hard to see any of it when it’s so lost in bleaching sun and steamed windows. To be truthful, some other sense of Chirrut’s reaches out.

Chirrut finally thinks to pull out his sunglasses as a headache builds from the light. He pauses a couple meters from Rint, the older boy looking him over. 

“Did the master give you extra punishment?”

Chirrut smiles after a moment. “We had a nice chat.”

Rint rolls his eyes. “You fight pretty good.” Chirrut fights better than pretty good. “Do you want to finish what we started?”

“No, thank you.”

“Why not?”

“I’m going to work in the gardens.”

“Then I suppose you’ll have to get past,” Rint says. The understatement in his tone pulls and pulls at something deep and boiling inside Chirrut’s chest. He remembers Rint’s earlier words very easily.

“Should I ask one of the masters if they can get by?” Chirrut’s voice is clear.

“Can you find your way to them?”

“Can’t you do better than that?” Chirrut laughs. 

He goes to pass into the greenhouse, but the older boy holds out his arm.

“Yes?” Chirrut inquires, still holding on to good-natured tactics.

“Are you really blind?” Rint asks, bluntly. Chirrut stares at the fabric of the older boy’s robe. Is it just to sting that he says things like this? Picking on the blind; it’s not very imaginative. Chirrut has an annoying laugh, he should try that out. 

“You do stuff like that,” Rint says. “You saw my arm.” There’s something threatening in his stillness. “Are you faking it? It’s like you are. For special treatment.”

“You’re an expert, of course, on the matter,” he says.

Rint scowls, squinting, and Chirrut knows they will fight before he actually speaks. “You don’t _act_ blind,” Rint says.

It’s with the sensation of a snap in two that Chirrut asks in an interested tone, “you’re that eager for a second beating? I can give you another demonstration, there’s no need for all this.”

He’ll apologize to Master Ji. For wasting her time. He’ll take more shifts in the garden and willingly scrub the dorm toilets if it means snapping Rint’s words back into his mouth. At close quarters it’s easier to find an opponent’s arm, or wrist. Of course, he’s not thinking about it in this sense when Rint is struggling against the lock Chirrut has about his forearm. Something is pulsing, torn open behind his ribs, hot behind his eyes.

Suddenly he realizes they’re not alone. Perhaps he would have caught someone approaching if it hadn’t been in the peripheral. They positioned their spar behind a large stone so as to avoid attention, but obviously not far enough. It’s too late now.

“Is that Master Ji?” Chirrut calls, not looking, not quite daring, squinting instead over Rint’s jerking shoulder. Whoever it is takes a moment to reply. 

“Your fight would be over if it were,” they call from the corner of the greenhouse.

Chirrut whips his head up before the last word is spoken, heart leaping to his throat. 

Definitely _not_ Master Ji.

Rint takes the distraction to sweep Chirrut’s legs out from under him and then Chirrut spends the next few moments trying to regain his upper hand with no time to think of who’s watching as the exchange reduces itself to a tussle in the dirt. At some point Rint gets distance and charges, knocking Chirrut easily to the ground with his extra mass. His head bounces off the earth. Rint is not a particularly skilled fighter, but he has the advantage of bulk and height.

“Hey!”

Chirrut avoids a heavy punch to the face.

Suddenly Rint stumbles off.

“All right–!” The newcomer’s large frame moves between Chirrut and Rint. “You win, all right, all right!”

Rint wins?

“The fight’s not over,” Chirrut says from the ground. He struggles with the shock of having Rint’s knee removed from his chest.

“Says who?” the unnamed boy before him asks.

“The one being stepped on,” Chirrut snaps. He fights back a wince as he sits up; his head is bruised tender and pulses. He isn’t _truly_ being stepped on, but his pride feels thoroughly trampled.

“Mind your own business, Malbus,” Rint says through deep breaths. He eyes the boy, as if he weren’t sizing him up. They’re nearly the same height and the boy has the advantage of mass over Rint, unlike Chirrut. Rint rubs a dark smear from his split lip, left from Chirrut’s sharp elbow.

“Mind _you_ are not late for your _duties_.” The boy, Malbus, gestures toward the garden with his chin. He says his words calmly. “Master Tinari is right over there. She waiting for you?”

Rint’s gaze hits him as Chirrut, feeling out a shallow cut on his chin and bracing himself on one arm, stares approximately back in the harsh light. Malbus waits, lowering his arm. Finally, Rint holds up his hands. He stalks away without looking back.

Malbus doesn’t say anything as he moves to give Chirrut a hand up. His grip is firm and dry. Sun-warmed, even as the air chills. Chirrut lands lightly on his feet with a huff, glancing away from the stare Malbus has fixed on him– his eyes improbably large and dark– and leans forward on his dirty knees. He focusses on evening his breaths, though they are already far more steady than his heart rate.

“No one asked for your help,” Chirrut says plainly. 

A pause while Malbus shifts. “Then don’t say thanks,” he replies, nettled.

Chirrut bites his tongue. “Can you see my staff?” It's not so much a staff as it is a stick. He can still use it in a fight though.

“Ah– it’s here,” Malbus says. Chirrut takes it and his folded sunglasses with a murmur of acknowledgment, grasping them precariously while fixing his shoe, pulling rocks from it. Malbus stays where he is, doesn’t leave. “You’re all right?” he asks Chirrut.

“Fine,” Chirrut tells him, a flush burning the back of his neck. He makes an effort in humility to shove his embarrassment and his petulance down behind the excitement running in his chest. He slips on his sunglasses. “What’s my savior’s name?” 

The boy raises his brows doubtfully at the dubbing, between bright glares of light. “Baze Malbus.” Chirrut carefully presses it into his memory, like a flower between pages of a book. He finds it rings; he finds he knows the name. Baze holds out Chirrut’s outer robe, dusted with sand, his hand awkward in waiting for Chirrut to take it. 

“I’ve heard that name before,” Chirrut says, sinking his fingers into the thick, folded material. Having grown up in the Temple, he has likely heard every name before. But. Baze winces. “...Should I not have?”

“How could anyone avoid hearing something if they’re able?” Baze asks. Then recollection strikes and instantly two incomplete pictures merge into one. He’s heard _of_ Baze Malbus; plenty of times he’s had the name echo past him, masters discussing quiet things amongst themselves in the long, temple halls. 

So that name is _this_ boy.

“If you didn’t want people to recognize your name, you shouldn’t have passed your fifth duan so quickly,” Chirut says, amused.

Baze is not good at guarding his expression and his displeasure is quite clear. Or perhaps it’s that he has no interest in guarding it. Maybe both. His face reddens. “Master Po’ahc seems to have personally told whole temple,” Baze says, a little petulantly. 

Chirrut laughs. “They’ve been using it to motivate the lower acolytes,” he explains.

Baze Malbus looks so stricken at this that Chirrut laughs again. 

“Only the ones who will listen,” he says. “Po’ahc speaks highly of you.”

Baze nods. He seems reluctant to talk about it. “I’m not ungrateful,” he says to be polite.

“You’re embarrassed,” Chirrut says, grinning. “I see this is how you’ve charmed them.”

“Not sure I’ve ever been accused of that.” He looks at Chirrut and Chirrut thinks it’s very nice. “Do I know your name?”

“Not as I know yours,” Chirrut replies, feeling no urgency to keep his smile at bay. “No such reputation, yet.” An entirely different reputation has begun to grow around Chirrut’s antics. Enjoying this anonymity, he fails to mention his name to Baze.

“Isn’t that too mysterious?” Baze asks quite deadpan.

“I’m _very_ mysterious.”

“Are you? Must be when you’re not rolling around in the dirt.”

“That was not rolling, that was winning.”

“Dirtiest sort of winning I’ve ever seen,” Baze says. “But you _might_ have won, if I hadn’t distracted you.”

“What? You’re joking! I would definitely have won. He’s sloppy, I can’t believe he’s older.”

Baze laughs, a sort of surprised breath. “He cheats,” he says. “Don’t expect an apology for stopping him.”

“No,” Chirrut says. He leans a hand on his hip. “I didn’t ask for your help, Baze Malbus, but I will say thanks. You struck a breath of fear into Rint when you mentioned Tinari.” Chirrut grins, sure his gums are showing.

He has noticed that Baze is slower to speak now that he’s not standing between Rint and Chirrut, but he seems to hesitate even longer this time, as if surprised. “He’s always trying to get away with things. Master Tinari has no patience for bullies.”

“Neither do I,” Chirrut says. “Unfortunately for him.”

“Seemed like it was more unfortunate for you,” Baze says.

Chirrut laughs, waving his words away. “It would have been fine. I appreciate your help though.”

“If you say so.”

Baze considers him again, as if searching Chirrut’s face. His skin prickles with warmth. Carefully, Chirrut pretends not to notice his staring and starts off toward the greenhouse.

“Were you going this way?” he asks, pulling his arms in a casual stretch above his head.

“You—” Baze starts as he slides past. “Are you working in the gardens?” 

Chirrut takes a breath, insects tick in the summer light, and a breeze sweeps down the hill, cooling Chirrut’s hot face, ruffling their robes. It carries the smell of wet earth from the greenhouse. The brief suggestion of laundry soap, sweat, and fresh dirt– dirt that sticks under nails and coats skin till its grey– slips by from Baze’s robes.

“My punishment,” Chirrut replies with another laugh threatening as he crosses the yard, staring at the ground rather hopelessly, his heart beating with enough strength to force his voice louder in order to hear himself over it, “till the end of time!”

But the end of time, Chirrut decides, has already decided, can take forever for all he cares when Baze Malbus steps into the warm, rich-scented greenhouse after him.

“Baze,” someone calls from the raised beds, “where’d you go?”

––––

Chirrut shifts fully awake to a strong sense of something incoming as the last of sleep slips back, the scent of wet earth lingering within him. 

No. More than incoming. He’s sweating and shivering. Slow breathing creeps over the joint of his shoulder from Baze, curled warm around his back. No other sound in the small silent room beyond their two breaths. Sitting up, Chirrut follows the thread of unease. He leans a hand against the wall. Baze tightens his arm around him. Barely can he grasp it, but something is wrong. The vibrations start low, takes its time across miles of old, dusted roads. The ground hums, then begins to quake until his echo-box rattles on the table, the cot in its frame. Beside him, Baze grips his arm. Dust sprinkles down from the stone ceiling as it shifts minutely.

“Tank,” Baze breathes, though they both know it. As it nears Baze gets off the bed and goes to where he placed his cannon after cleaning it the night before. “They’re patrolling.”

“They couldn’t find a larger one?” Chirrut remarks, rising restlessly as well, unable to throw the dull pit in his stomach despite his levity.

He feels the weight of its metal bones creak through the city. Jedhan streets can be narrow to a fault and this is the Tradesman Quarter, far off the main road. The armored car feels large enough to knock a building from its cradle; it would never fit here. It’s on the wider streets that head toward the Temple of Kyber, but so heavy the vibrations reach them even blocks away.

Baze’s power cell cartridges clack together as Chirrut pulls on his robes. Then Baze’s attention hits him. “I’m sure a staff would do very well against an armored vehicle.”

“Stay inside, if you prefer.”

“You think they’ll just give up on sight of you?”

“I will be lucky in that regard and won’t see them coming.”

“We’re not going out in this,” Baze says.

“Are we not?” he replies, swiping his echo-box from the table with little patience. A creeping sensation trickles down his back. “They aren’t patrolling. That behemoth is large enough to puncture a hole through the thickest wall. The Te–“

A sudden beat of footsteps on the stairs below stops him, closer and closer, and then Pleness is pounding on the door and the pit in his stomach blooms. “The Temple is on fire!” she shouts. “They’ve gathered the masters in front of it!”

It’s not a moment before they’re outside, pushing their way into the street. Swarmed with defiant people brought from their beds by the rumble of the tank, the activity allows Chirrut and Baze to go unconcealed beyond the hoods of their outer robes pulled closed over their Guardian colors. Chirrut reaches for Baze when the first wave of smoke hits him. Around them people murmur and cry out.

They both hurry through the edge of growing crowds, slipping down side roads their feet know better than any, that, like all roads in Jedha, lead to the steps at the foundation of the Temple. Of their home. 

“No,” Baze growls, soft and heartbroken and he’s seen the flames licking high above roofs, kissing the clouds of smoke. 

Close to the square, they pull off until they reach a break in the bodies that have gathered to watch the Temple of the Whills burn. They’ve covered their mouths against the thick waves of smoke, but Chirrut can still hear Baze’s labored breathing through his sleeve, hitching in pain and anger. The overwhelming sound takes over. Flames roar and envelope him. Creaks of wood and stone. Groans of the Temple’s bones straining. Breaking glass. The force of it nearly knocks him from his feet. And he is drawn down to only a small, solid object in a chasm, endless and wide, of heat and sound and smoke.

“Baze,” he mutters.

A hand grips his robes as if he might walk toward the flames. Or if not him, then Baze. It tethers them together.

“It’s burning,” Baze breathes, voice strained. He struggles with his words, pulling them from a dark, wet place. But the dread in his voice is clear. His shocked awe. “They didn’t have to _burn it_.”

“The masters?” Chirrut asks lowly, straining to find anyone familiar in the mess of sound and heat.

“They’re here, Chirrut.”

He waits tensely for Baze’s next words, like he did the rumble of the tank. Something is falling directionless within him.

“Two bodies on the ground,” Baze says. “They’re not moving.”

“Can you see their faces?”

“No,” Baze says, his voice breaking against smoke and grief. “It looks like Ilta.”

“Are they still here?” Chirrut’s blood is screaming, despite his calm tone. He pulls Baze’s fingers from his robes and holds him for a moment, trying to take in the callouses and rough knuckles that he knows so well. The familiar hand seems distant. But this is the hand that moves so true in forms, over his weapon, over Chirrut’s palm, that honors each thing it encounters with respect. Chirrut knows the power in such a hand, that holds itself so careful and gentle against skin, vicious against armor. It trembles, clenches in anger. If not for Chirrut’s grip it would reach for Baze’s gun.

Baze knows to whom he refers. “Yes.” As soon as he says the word, Chirrut finds them, standing mere yards away, guns knocking dull against armor. 

When he steps out of the crowd, Baze grabs for him, but Chirrut glides out of reach. He can barely breathe from the smoke, from the ache of it, the fear. His eyes sting even as he shuts them. 

_I am one with the Force. The Force is with me._

With each step it’s not anger that walks with him as it would with Baze. As a child, Chirrut’s temper was always his weakest corner according to Guardian convention. He used to tell his masters, “if only the Force didn’t provide such strong targets.” They never laughed, though his sense of humor was said even then to be his strongest trait. 

_I am one with the Force._

Baze doesn’t follow and Chirrut prays that the Force keep Baze where his staunch heart will be safe.

_The Force is with me._

Besides. They’ve been together for quite awhile now. He should be used to Chirrut stepping out before him. His chest pounds, fear and adrenaline racing like wild beasts through him.

_In darkness, cold, it goes. In light, cold._

“Are you satisfied?” he calls, voice hoarse. He waits for a cool wave of air clean of smoke to wash over him and breathes as deep as he can. A murmur is spreading through the crowd.

_The old sun brings no heat._

There’s the _chck_ of a stormtrooper’s step. A pause as they look past his hood and outer robe. “Go back to your people, Guardian. There’s nothing left for you to guard.”

Chirrut inclines his head, listening to the wind and the voices barely discernible, warm smoke blowing around him. “You are wrong,” he tells them.

“What’s he saying?”

“Is he armed?”

“I am one with the Force,” he says. “And the Force is with me. All is as the Force wills it.”

They’re spreading around him. He widens his stance, pushes his cloak from his shoulders and lets it hang from his strap. He feels it billow in the unbearably hot air.

“Don’t move, you.”

_But there is heat in breath and life._

“You’ll have to speak up!” he calls over the flames.

And then he ducks. He kicks one approaching from behind as shots fire over his head, his foot planting firmly and pushing off. His staff thrusts out and digs into another’s throat. With each blow, he feels the heat of the flames eating into him as he spins and drives into the troopers. There’s not so many of them. Why should there be? It is already burning. 

But it will stand; its walls are thick. 

What is a temple anyway, but just a place for gathering? In the end?

What is a place compared to the lives spent there, that catch fire and burn away much more quickly? The centuries of history and holy reverence. The things that fill the stone walls, that paint them and bless them. Now ash.

 _In life, there is the Force. In the Force, there is life._

One trooper sprints away from Chirrut’s staff, the flames, and the heat.

 _And the Force is eternal._

In this moment: the tightening of arm muscles as they lift, the abrupt backward step of the trooper, the nearly inaudible charge of energy overwhelmed by howling, crackling heat, coming just before the searing blaze in Chirrut’s heart at the recognition. 

“Wait! _Please_ —!”

In the last second, the shots cut through the scorching air, uneven, almost graceless in the way they break off. Very fast and it’s over. It was either the beginning of something, or the ending of, when Baze took the step he needed to brace his cannon and kill the trooper that tried to run away. Nearly before the final body falls to the dirt, he is with Chirrut. Hands take his, calmly and firmly, smoothing the tension in his fingers, while something chaotic threatens to break out around them and shouts fill the air. Baze’s rough palms still tremble. Because of his grip Chirrut cannot reach to touch his face. Too late will the chance come; the damage will be hidden away.

Chirrut’s heart thuds heavily in his chest so suddenly that he’s taken aback.

“Po’ahc has them,” Baze breathes, almost too soft to hear over the flames if their heads weren’t so close. He says this because he guesses where Chirrut’s flung thoughts go. The two unnamed Guardians will not be left in the dirt. “They have them. You gave them their chance.”

There’s no time to reach the group of fleeing Guardians and Disciples across this mass of bodies, though the Force brings their footfalls to Chirrut, sweeps them through limbs and smoke in one more blessing, as they carry the dead with them, away from all of this. There’s no time. The tank rolls onto the street and the crowd disperses with a new wave of fear, and Chirrut and Baze disappear into the cold, early dawn.

Away from the heat, in the shadowed, smoke-filled alleys, Chirrut feels as if he’s fallen back into his sweat-slicked skin like a wash of cool water. His whole body trembles like it hasn’t since he was a child. They don’t get three blocks before Baze slows and stutters to a halt behind him. He’s still and very quiet against a wall of the street. Chirrut bows his head against his staff and presses his skin against the smoothed wood. He breathes prayers to the stones, not caring to cut the desperation in his voice because all is with the Force, even this, even his despair. 

“Stop,” Baze says through the silence. As if he could not bear another word. “Chirrut… what’s the _use_?”

Use. He mouths the word, shapes his tongue around it as if it might help him grasp it. 

“What use it ever was to holy men and those vagrant,” he says and he means it as a challenge to that unknown note in Baze’s tone. They keep their voices low lest they’re caught by the smoke left in their throats. He wants Baze to speak. Not hide in his silences from Chirrut. Not now. Not after such a shared loss.

“What is it for?” Baze finally asks, and he’s so angry. Chirrut recalls how he would lead prayer when they were young and how no one found it difficult to listen. “Because it’s not to protect. Are we not devoted? Have I not understood? In all things lies the Force. And these Jedhan lives will burn because of it. What has this _been_ _for_ , Chirrut?”

“Baze Malbus,” Chirrut says, to call him back from that precarious place. 

Baze exhales and it shakes. He leaves his place by the wall and passes Chirrut, near enough to touch. But he seems to avoid the small space between them as if he fears it might burn, as if Chirrut could injure him with a mere touch.

“We need to keep moving,” Baze says, and to Chirrut’s dismay he hears shame chip at his words. And Baze does not wait. And he does not speak. And the thing that has been falling in Chirrut’s chest finally crumples against the earth. Chirrut follows Baze a step after. They leave the close archway they lingered beneath, but the moment comes with as if at last stepping from the shadows. 

As they travel, the city echoes with shouts and smoke.

When they’re back inside Lona’s shop, they sit with Pleness, who makes them tea with shaky hands and speaks soft in the quiet, while together they wait for her mother to return from the early morning streets. Outside can be heard rushed footsteps and the hush of careful voices as those Jedhans seek routes back to safety. It’s days later that Chirrut learns of Ilta’s and Tinari’s cremation, lost in the sands. Given to the vast desert, they join the Force. The world over and one could not find them, spread to the winds; free.

**Author's Note:**

> the present tense in this might be a little confusing, especially in the beginning flashback, but i’m hoping the payoff is that it feels like Chirrut is completely taken by the memories. i have more written, but it's still unfinished. i'm hoping posting this gives me the push to finally get this where it's been heading for three years, instead of letting it sit in onenote collecting cyber dust. 
> 
> thank you very much for reading, any and all feedback is so greatly appreciated!


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